Lynda’s research-based practice merges archive, photography, video and sound. Employing techniques, methods and materials that are sympathetic and relevant to the subject.
She focuses on long-term bodies of work: primarily looking at landscape and the traces of memory in these spaces. She is interested in exploring ways of showing what is invisible to the naked eye, often employing camera less techniques and working with the materiality of specific landscapes in an attempt to bring an element or trace of its history into the work.
Website: lyndalaird.com
Siobhan Stanley
I work in the classical tradition of figurative oil painting. My current body of work explores a re-imagined recording of the lives of black Elizabethans. Within this work I am also exploring themes concerning masculinity and the tenderness of fraternity and brotherhood; gender and conformity and the often unarticulated and subtle boundaries that distinguish the ‘invited’ from the ‘uninvited’. I have trained in classical painting ateliers in both Florence and London. I have exhibited at Leighton House, London and The blackShed Gallery Hastings.
website: siobhanstanley.co.uk
instagram: @siobart
Dear Gordon workshops
Neil Delete & Drew Copus ran three workshops at Hollington Youth Centre in partnership with their youth workers. The starting point was the Dear Gordon exhibition and we were originally planning a series of 8 workshops working with boys aged 11-15 exploring issues surrounding masculinity in contemporary society using ‘Dear Gordon’ artwork by Jonathan Cole. We aimed to explore what it means to be male in contemporary society, by viewing notions of masculinity through the media i.e. lads’ mags, music videos, TV, newspapers, video games, pornography & illustrating the effects on boys’ self-esteem e.g. discouragement to show emotions/cry, links between violent images in film/video games & normalisation of violent behaviour/acting out. Together with a youth worker, they would explore these issues alongside two artists, who will help them to produce artworks expressing their feelings & views on the subject, to be exhibited at Claremont Studios.
The aims of the workshops were:
- Building on young people’s (aged 11-24) interest in media and arts to develop youth influenced projects that explore social and cultural issues beyond stereotypes
- Harnessing and strengthening young people’s: critical thinking, group work, decision making, communication and technical art skills
- Giving voice to young people in a manner that captures other young people’s and stakeholder attention, and fosters social and cultural cohesion and understanding
- Widening access to arts and art spaces and enhancing the responsiveness of those spaces to young people
- Reaching a targeted mixture of young people, including those that would benefit most from this provision e.g. disadvantaged young men
- Empowering young people to make considered and informed decisions e.g. choice of language, career choices, relationship choices
- Contribute to changing arts spaces and equality and diversity debate
We learned a lot about the deep and difficult issues that young people face surrounding gender stereotyping & the media’s role in perpetuating these. While we had to shorten the number of sessions delivered, it was a very worthwhile experiment and the two subsequent aGender workshops in collaboration with Hastings Adventure Playground and Hastings Youth Council have been outstanding. For more information see: agender.co.uk
Flip Test
Jonathan Cole & Caroline Le Breton
‘Dear Gordon’ Jonathan Cole & Caroline Le Breton
908 smartie tops arranged to spell out found letter.
A celebration and re-creation of the text of a love letter found in 1996 in a new studio, an old print works off Queens Rd, Hastings. It took 3 years to collect enough smartie tops helped by others and the chance discovery of hundreds of smartie tops on the banks of the river Thames in Essex of a beach made up almost entirely of plastic washed in by tides. The work was first shown in 2002 in the basement of 12 Claremont, Hastings for the Claremont Studios inaugural show. It has never been shown since but was discovered during the relocation of Claremont Studios to their new premises on Kings Road St Leonards on Sea. The original letter is lost but beside it is the original transcription document they used to construct the work.
Scott Robertson
1. ‘Yeah Yeah That Was Then This Is Now’ Scott Robertson
Glass bell jar, latex balloons, wood base
2. ‘Self Portrait in a Rapidly Ageing and Slightly Comedic, Abstract Way’ Scott Robertson
Pen on helium filled balloon. Balloon ribbon
3. ‘Nuff Said’ Scott Robertson
HB pencil on blank postcard, sent 1st class to purchaser
Just because we can speak does not mean we have to. It’s a postcard, intended to send a message of sorts. If you decide to buy this work Scott will make (draw) one especially for you and post it 1st class, and that is that. Nuff said.
Scott Robertson website
scott-robertson.org.uk/art
Andrew and Eden Kötting
‘DEAR DARLING aka Dear Gordon’ Andrew and Eden Kötting 2014
Wood, Paper, Cardboard and Found Objects
A sculptural work, which includes two rolls of wallpaper with hand written text on them, two tables, a chair and four cardboard tubes designed to house the texts. All of the elements are second-hand or found objects. They have an intrinsic value or potency to them, which in no small way is down to the happenstancial nature of their discovery. The hand written texts are the only contrived elements and they are a direct reaction to an invitation to respond to a found love-letter. The work might be seen as a conversational piece in which an original text begets a response; a beck and thus a call.
‘DEAR DARLING aka Dear Gordon, DEAR GORDON aka Dear Darling’ Andrew and Eden Kötting 2014
A limited edition of eight x two postcards signed by the artists.
Andrew & Eden Kötting website
www.andrewkotting.com
Anonymous Bosch
1. ‘These Moments of Privacy have Past’ Anonymous Bosch
Found objects
Installation of found passport photographs, love notes, song lyrics.
2. ‘I Only Think of You’ Anonymous Bosch
Photograph
A3 Digital print of found polaroid probably inscribed with song lyrics.
His practice explores the aesthetics of the urban landscape, he is interested in the life of objects, principally the discarded and how they can evoke memory and emotional responses to people and place. This series of work responds to and investigates the use of found objects analyzing the relationships between objects and people, the act of collecting, archiving and appropriation.
Anonymous Bosch website
anonymousbosch.info/About-Anonymous-Bosch
Becky Beasley
‘Astray’ Becky Beasley 2014
Brass cast of a found hotel ashtray
Brass cast of a found plastic hotel ashtray with the word, ‘Astray’ embossed in Gloucester MT Extra Condensed lettering. Technically a malapropism, the removal of the letter ‘h’ from the word, ashtray, brings a wild new dimension to the object. An untimely object, the production of an ashtray in 2014 is both about loss and celebration, but also about the repurposing of a type of object which, in searching ebay, one finds now regularly described not only as ashtray, but also as small pot or tea-light holder. As with Beasley’s previous edition, Hardware, a brass gherkin for Spike Island (2013), the viewer must make their own decision as to exactly what purpose it might serve.
The 2014 production of the object- which the artist first found and imagined with the word Astray’ inscribed in 2004- is a result of an invitation from the South London Gallery curator Anna Gritz to produce an edition as an aftermath to Beasley’s project, A Slight Nausea.The preparation, molding and first casting has been supported by Claremont Studios and Dear Gordon.
M.J. Becky Beasley 2014
Photograph
B/W aerial 1:1 scale photograph of a box of empty plastic files which the artist found on the street in London in 2002, photographed and then kept for the next ten years imagining a possible future sculpture she might make with them. Eventually she threw them away. The acrylic frame was also found either on the street or in a charity shop at around the same time.
Becky Beasley website:
www.beckybeasley.com
Dear Gordon
‘Dear Gordon’ is a six-month project, which includes an exhibition of contemporary visual art incorporating the written word in powerful and innovative ways. The art shown in the Claremont Studios (CS) Project Space will be by a mixture of established international artists showing alongside and thus supporting CS artists and recent graduates. The exhibition will provide a focus for 8 workshop sessions for young men to explore use of text in art, texting, how technology is changing the way they communicate with their peers and the impact of the words and images they chose.
DG is funded by the Arts Council with partnership through aGender from the A4e express National Lottery.
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